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2008/05/17

Bird nests

The crows are at it again . They have built a nest in the grilled cover of the bathroom window of the house opposite ours .The flat is normally vacant since the people who own it live elsewhere , but as fate would have it they descend at the oddest times especially when a crow couple builds a nest - and they break it up. This year the crows have bee fortunate and I suspect there is a batch of little crowlings there .

Now most old Indian houses have ventilators set up high on the walls close to the ceiling . Our house has them too. They don't serve much purpose except to let rainwater in. This year birds have nested in one of the ventilators in the bathroom.While the rest of the fmaily thinks its a pigeon couple , I have my doubts . There is none of the distinctive cooing noises that pigeons normally make . Last Saturday there was an unholy smell much like a dead lizard. We searched high and low for the offending object and drew blanks from the bathroom and the shelves outside stacked , no, jammed with magazines that I cannot throw away.

However sniffing high and low , we deduced that the smell came from the ventilator where there was a lot of baby chirps and a great fluttering of wings and suchlike activity . It must be a crow family and the dead lizard must have been an offering of unending love to Mrs Bird . Since pigeons are not , to my knowledge, carnivores , it must be a crow family .Long may they live albeit without such offerings .I dread what they might bring next to feed the babies .

We have lots of crows nest around. But luckily they are on the trees. btw, the ventilators are very useful--it's to let hot air out and makes a world of difference in a hot climate like ours--if the house is not air-conditioned. New houses built without them are much warmer. After all, hot air rises. So the higher the ventilator, the better the inflow of cooler air through the windows.